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The Intellectual Beings, thus, are multiple and one; in virtue
of their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in
one and one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon
entire; even upon the partial thing they act as entire; but there
is the difference that at first the partial accepts this working
only partially though the entire enters later. Thus, when Man
enters into human form there exists a particular man who,
however, is still Man. From the one thing Man- man in the Idea-
material man has come to constitute many individual men: the one
identical thing is present in multiplicity, in multi-impression,
so to speak, from the one seal.
This does not mean that Man Absolute, or any Absolute, or the
Universe in the sense of a Whole, is absorbed by multiplicity; on
the contrary, the multiplicity is absorbed by the Absolute, or
rather is bound up with it. There is a difference between the
mode in which a colour may be absorbed by a substance entire and
that in which the soul of the individual is identically present
in every part of the body: it is in this latter mode that Being
is omnipresent.
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